


A Theory of Mind

by kaizoku



Category: Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Genre: F/M, First Time, M/M, Oral Sex, Sex Work, Subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-06 15:57:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3140135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaizoku/pseuds/kaizoku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of how Crake met Oryx, before she became Oryx.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Theory of Mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crookedspoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/gifts).



_The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.  
― Friedrich Nietzsche_

 

Crake interviewed the girl they sent. Not that he needed to. She was perfect. He could tell at a glance that she was, if not the same one, then a close enough simulacrum.

She was wearing a glittery high-waisted baby doll dress, a shimmering signpost of her intentions. Or his. The effect was oddly innocent, sexy little girl dress-up, but unmistakably pleeb. He wondered idly who had seen her come in. It was trendy to flaunt your vices at Watson-Crick, as long as it didn't get in the way of getting results.

Jenny, she called herself, which almost made him laugh. Glenn and Jenny. Jimmy would have had a ball with that.

"Wow, you're beautiful," he said. Direct, unabashed flattery.

"Student Services doesn't mess around." A joke to lighten the mood.

"I hope the neanderthals at the gate didn't bother you." Demonstration of personal concern.

The face was really very good, he thought. Jimmy would be pleased - more than pleased. Bewildered, magnetized. He imagined emailing him a pic or opening up a video link, just to see what his reaction would be. But no, Crake could wait. Play the long game.

"Thank you. No, I was not troubled."

She had an accent. Fucking perfect.

"This is a nice place," she said, glancing around. Crake leaned back against the wall.

"Would you like a drink?" She nodded absently. He was in the kitchen a little while and came back with two martinis to find her examining an enzyme model. It was odd to see it in her small hands. No one had been to his rooms since he started post-grad.

"You are a scientist?"

"Bioengineer. I'll take you around to my lab later." Crake smiled. He liked to show off his toys.

He invited her to sit on the couch and took the armchair himself. The situation made him think of one of those porno sites they used to watch, CastingCouch.com or something like that, where the draw was that you were getting what they were selling for free. Nonsense of course; the actresses were being paid (or they weren't) but in any case, the acting was so transparently bad that it didn't matter.

Maybe that was why his body was reacting. The nostalgia circuit. All new info processed through pre-wired neural connections, matched against the patterns already available. That was how memory was constructed. The more it was repeated, the more the particular pattern was reinforced. The memory of a dark room, say, flickering lights from two screens, a stuttering breath behind him.

He had the personal data she had given to Student Services, but he asked again, as if it were a real interview. Correction: it was a real interview, even if the answers were lies. He would do a little of his own digging later.

"But I do not understand," Jenny hesitated, when Crake asked where she was from. "Your school, they have already this information."

"I'm offering a private business relationship," Crake said. "Separate from and in place of your contract with the school. To continue as long as both parties are satisfied. You can leave at any time."

He laid out the conditions and compensation. Wrote down a number on a scrap of paper and slid it over on the coffee table. There was something to be said for the dramatic gesture. Her fingers grazed against his.

"This is very much." She traced the zeroes, her nail a delicate pink oval.

"Not for what I'm asking."

"You can afford this?" Caution, cynicism.

"My research is lucrative. You'll learn more about it, if you care to."

She smiled at him, soft and genuine. "I am interested."

* * *

Crake had always thought that he would be better adapted to the shtlel or the harem. Something with arranged marriages, obedient wives, no expectation of romance. He had never dated. It wasn't something he would be good at, so why bother? And besides, he didn't have time. He had never fit in among his peers. Naively he had thought that university would be different, but he was used to operating independently and associating with adults, so again he felt like an outlier.

He had no "kindred spirits." At least none living.

Even with a lower neurotypical to genius ratio, the eccentrics were all eccentric in their own solitary ways and the competition was fierce. The colleague you fucked today might stab you in the back for your intellectual property tomorrow.

But Jenny was good for him. She was different from anyone he had met before. She proved to be diverting without overtaxing his time or attention.

What had begun as a desire to take, to have, to win, became… complicated. Jenny was more than convenient; she complemented him. She had an astonishing ability to anticipate his needs, yet respect his boundaries. She was his personal assistant, his companion, his helpmeet.

* * *

Sex was fun. Crake hadn't expected that, but it was. He had never had much inclination beyond what he thought of as "scheduled maintenance." But Jenny surprised him.

The first time was awkward, no getting around it. His spine was almost rigid, his breathing shallow, when she sank down on him. He didn't know where to put his hands until she showed him. She told him to move. He didn't last long. She kissed him quiet when he asked if she had orgasmed.

She was a patient teacher, though, and Crake's natural curiosity soon paid dividends for both of them.

It was a surreal experience to come home to find her stretched out naked in his sheets or dancing to pop tunes in frilly lingerie. He'd never seen a woman wearing real garters before, except on the net. And then, as she relaxed into their routine, to find her sitting on his kitchen counter eating hot pizza out of the box.

"Mmm, you must try this."

"Why do you like this crap? The Compound restaurant has organic hothouse tomatoes, you know."

"I ordered from the new pizza place, the one next to AltAttoo. You know it? Look what I got there, do you want to see?" She pulled up her skirt teasingly to bare her thighs and show him a little iridescent blue butterfly.

She let him open her up right there, licking between her clenching legs until his face was dripping wet and he was dizzy from pheromones and the displacement of blood to his genitals. The tattoo was temporary, only lasting a few months, but Jenny was now a permanent installation.

* * *

She had been brought to Texas before the droughts. She was a refugee, one of children who had lost their parents in the so-called religious conflicts. Rising sea levels, scarce resources, overpopulation. The usual culprits. There was a brother. They had been given new names to "help them fit in."

Maybe it was a good thing. A new name for a new life.

Then the big hurricane hit and the camp broke down. They were relocated and in the chaos, her brother was lost. Without identification, the only work the refugees could find was in sweatshops or as servants, paid almost nothing.

_How did you get out?_

There was an outbreak of cholera. The CorpSeCorps and the ParaMed team came in and cleared the factories. Because she was underage, they placed her with a family. In San Francisco, yes. She would always be grateful to the CorpSeCorps for that. For letting her stay and get an education.

_So you were never in movies?_

No, of course not. Why would he think that?

He figured it was the sanitized version. Maybe she didn't want him to feel bad, to compare himself with the other men she had served. Or maybe it was the truth and what she told Jimmy later was just what he needed to hear. There were moments when he saw that look in her eye, the same one from the freeze frame, and wondered what she was thinking. Did he want her to hate him? What would that have achieved?

He could have offered her revenge on her abusers. An agonizing death, internal organ failure, bleeding from the orifices. But in her stories, it was no one's fault. Even the sweatshop owner was a nice man who had given her a place to live.

 _Sure, Uncle Pete was a nice man too._

* * *

Crake only realized that Jenny was bored after he found her reading his undergrad thesis. It wasn't anything too sensitive, but he was careful after that to keep all his work notes at the office or under several layers of encryption. He scrubbed the Maddaddam path too, just to be safe. He wasn't going to forget the lesson of Jimmy's mother any time soon.

It was funny the things that she picked up on. She asked him how the frogs that had been cloned and brought back from extinction were doing. Were they still alive? She would like to see them, these frogs that incubated their eggs by swallowing them.

Another time, they were lying in bed and she asked, "Why does your friend never come to visit you?"

"What friend?" He said blankly. He had invited a few of his work colleagues over for dinner a week ago. It had been pleasant, though he never would have if Jenny hadn't suggested it.

"Your friend Jimmy. The one you who you went to high school with."

They still played chess online intermittently, but Crake hadn't seen him since he had shown Jimmy the Extinctathon room. He flushed and scratched his neck.

"Oh, Jimmy. He's busy with his shitty Compound job, I guess." Last time they had talked, he'd had a girlfriend - Amanda something. An artist. No, he remembered her name, he had looked up her art and wondered what the heck Jimmy was doing with a girl like that. She was way too hardcore for him.

"You could call him, maybe," she said, uncharacteristically tentative.

Crake snorted. "We're not that kind of friends."

She gave him a side-long look. Her eyes were dark, and lit from behind by the lamp, she looked mysterious, ethereal. And oh, he didn't want to talk about Jimmy right now. He cupped her chin and kissed her, tracing the delicate curve of her lip, and swallowed her sigh.

But it occurred to him later to find something else for her to occupy her time. There were online courses she could take and, of course, vast amounts of entertainment, but perhaps something more engaging was necessary.

* * *

Once he explained the idea, she was into it too. It was easy for Crake to trump up a new identity and for Jenny to pull her own connections. In very little time, she became Mee So-Young, cosmetics saleswoman for AnooYoo. The higher-ups absolutely loved the name.

It meant that she was home less often, but Crake's research was taking up more time and energy, so it was just as well.

And there was the unexpected bonus of being able to keep an eye on Jimmy.

Jenny mostly worked in the field, hawking the AnooYoo gunk through an assortment of venues, but when she was stopped by the office, she heard all the gossip.

"Apparently he's got several on the go, all older married women."

"Yeah, that would be Jimmy. Total Oedipal complex," Crake smirked. It gave him a pang though. Jimmy brought low. Even though part of him wanted to crow over his own good strategy (it wasn't good luck), he recognized that emotion for the primitive throwback it was. The competition of the male.

"Just don't get caught up in his charisma," Crake couldn't help saying.

A dancing smile. "Maybe I should ask if he would like to try a threesome. He is not bad looking."

Crake choked, then coughed.

Jenny patted him on the back gently. "Too soon?"

"Never would be too soon," Crake said.

But he could see a plan beginning to take shape.

* * *

It was evening, and they were walking in the park near RejoovenEsense. They had just passed an elderberry tree that Crake thought looked familiar. Above, on an old-fashioned electric line, two morning doves were fluffing out their feathers against the cooling air.

"Do you think that birds can love?" Oryx asked. She was Oryx now, sliding into the role as easily as a snake into new skin.

Crake considered this. "Love is a chemically induced state that causes animals to act irrationally for the sake of reproduction. So, yes. Most bird species pair-bond, but are not necessarily sexually monogamous." He tucked her arm into his. "Without anthropomorphizing too much, we can say that birds exhibit attachment and loyalty. Parrots can be quite affectionate, but they also exhibit jealousy."

Oryx leaned her head on his shoulder. "What about crakes?"

"I'm not sure. The red-necked crake was a shy bird. Not much chance for study. Corvids, on the other hand, have been extensively studied. We know that they can recognize individual humans. They can find a person they know, follow them, even remember them many years later."

When Oryx lifted her head, there were tears in her eyes.

"Come on," Crake said. "Let's go home."


End file.
